Prayers in the Dark
by Kamchatka
Summary: Post-Episode 49. After Earth's surrender, Lady Une contemplates the day's events and finds unexpected comfort. Implied 2+H, LUx13. Complete. Please R & R.


Me no own Gundam Wing. We all know who does. 

Warnings: This was the first GW story I wrote, and it's never been beta'd. It was one of those damn things that said, "Write me," and wouldn't leave me alone 'til I did. Possible religious overtones, but nothing heavy or definite. You've been warned. Reviews craved.

  


_Prayers in the Dark  
by  
Kamchatka_

At last she escaped the bright chaos of the corridors. Entering the chapel was like stepping into another century. A handful of votive candles flickering behind the studiously non-denominational altar provided the only light. They set shadows dancing on the plain walls, the warmth of their dim illumination a welcome relief from the resource satellite's garish artificial lighting. The ancient scents of wax, incense, and the real oak of the narrow pews belonged to Earth, not space, not in this cold and desolate place where the world's hope had been reborn even as her own dreams had died in a silent, flaming scream of exploding metal.

She leaned back against the closed door, finally releasing her features from the rigid, stoic mask she had held them frozen into for... how long, now? Seventeen hours and twenty-seven minutes. Her life had been over for less than a day. It felt like years one moment and like only seconds the next. No longer held in check, the hollow ache in her chest swelled, and she let it escape in a gasping, dry-eyed sob. She sank to her knees behind the last wooden pew and buried her face in her hands..

Half remembered phrases from childhood prayers chased each other through a mind grown too sluggish to catch them.

_Hail Mary, full of grace. Pray for us sinners...  
Our Father, which art in Heaven...  
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death...  
...shadow...  
...now and at the hour of our death...  
...hour of our...  
...death._

"Oh, Treize..." she whispered breathlessly. "I can't even pray for you." _I can die for you... I surrendered for you. Surrendered. Gave away the world. But I can't pray. I can't even cry._

And so she knelt in the darkness, hugging pain to her breast and watched the peaceful, indifferent dance of candle light on the walls.

When another voice broke the silence, she wasn't certain at first whether the words were real or only sounding in her head. 

"Are you there?" The voice was male, soft and low, full of longing.

As her eyes grew more accustomed to the dim light, she saw that she was, indeed, not alone. Someone slumped in the far corner of the pew in front of her.

She froze. Had he spoken to her? No. He was looking at the candles, arms resting on the back of the pew in front of him, one hand toying with something that glinted in the dim light. A cross.

"I can't find her," he told the candles, in a voice heavy with misery. "If you're there, just please help me find her. Make her all right. I won't ask for anything else..."

He had snapped into focus so sharply that she wondered how she ever could have missed him. How had she not seen him, not felt his presence? Was her mind playing the trickster again? 

He smelled of sweat and smoke and blood, and his face, a face so young it still held some of the soft roundness of childhood, was streaked with battle grime and the tracks of tears. 

_Tears. I shouldn't have seen that. He wouldn't want me to see that._

He was half out of a space suit, the arms tied around his waist to keep it up. She'd seen others like it in the past few hours. Not White Fang, but from the colonies. A pilot. From the colonies.

As though he'd felt her scrutiny, he raised his head and met her gaze. The movement dislodged a ragged braid from its resting place on his back and set it swinging toward the floor. She had seen hair like that once before.

_I know him..._

He was the gundam pilot her men had captured near C-102 only a few months back. Yes, that was it. But he'd escaped to fight again. And this time, he'd won.

No, she told herself sternly. _We all won. The war is over._

_The war. Is over. _

_And Treize is dead._

Their eyes met. She could not look away.

He was so young.

He should have been cheering, celebrating with his friends, not fumbling with clumsy prayers in the dark.

Her eyes were drawn to the cross hanging from his hand on a delicate chain. "Do you believe?" she found herself asking. _Maybe if someone else believed..._

His eyes looked inward and his teeth tugged at his lower lip. 

"I don't know," he said after a long moment. "The people who raised me wanted me to. But I didn't. Couldn't. I told them the only god I believed in was the god of death. I'd seen lots of dead people, you know, but no miracles... until today."

"A miracle?" _Wars begin. Men die. Wars end. Men die. There are no miracles._

He nodded solemnly. "He couldn't have done it."

She let her eyes ask the question.

"When the last of Libra burned up. There's no way Heero could have made that shot. Really. Sometimes I let people think I'm some kind of idiot, but I'm good with physics. I did the calculations. The velocity, the trajectory... the heat, friction... it was all wrong. Even with Wing Zero, he couldn't really have done it."

"But he did."

The boy nodded again. "He did, even though he couldn't. That's a miracle, isn't it? And if there are miracles, maybe there's a God after all."

She stood, her knees shaking. "Not a very kind god, for some, I think."

He rose to his feet. Someone, somewhere had taught him manners. "He saved the world. That's pretty kind."

_Not my world._

"It wasn't the world you were praying for. You lost someone."

"My friend. She was on the Peacemillion, in the sickbay. Someone said they got all the wounded out, but they're... everywhere. I must've checked a hundred rooms. Everyone's so busy, and nobody knows what the next guy's doing. They couldn't have left her there, could they?"

_Why should I help you? Just yesterday you were my worst enemy. You'd have killed me on sight, and I'd have killed you. But this is today._

"I only know where the OZ and Alliance casualties were taken."

Hope flashed across his features. "She was with OZ until a few months ago. If she was still in the computers, maybe..."

"It's unlikely."

_No more unlikely than a handful of rebel children bringing down OZ. No more unlikely than an impossible shot saving the world._

He visibly deflated with the sigh he didn't bother trying to hide. 

"You're right." He stepped out into the aisle. "I'm sorry I bothered you." He dipped his head politely and turned to leave.

_Let it end here. The war is over. Let it be done and let the healing begin._

She reached out and gently caught his arm as he passed. "They're in the interior. Level 3, Corridor F. I just came from there. There was a girl I didn't recognize. She was very young."

Hope flared again, and it made him beautiful. 

Instead of rushing off, though, he reached out and clasped her hands in his own. They were rough and calloused, not an aristocrat's hands. _ Treize had the smoothest hands..._

"Thank you," he whispered. He closed her shaking fingers around the little cross he'd left in her hand. "I think maybe you need something to hold on to. Take care of it for me."

And then he was gone, vanished back into the bustle and noise.

She sat down and held the little cross up in the flickering candle light. It was perfectly plain, strung on a cheap silver chain, nothing more than a child's trinket, but it was warm in her hand. 

"I will," she told the empty room. Hot, cleansing tears spilled from her eyes, then, and she wept at last, aching, but no longer desolate. 

_The war is over._


End file.
